1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates, in general, to the diagnosis and/or detection of endometriosis. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to monoclonal antibodies against alpha 1-antitrypsin (A1AT), hybridoma cells producing the same and their uses in diagnosing and/or detecting endometriosis from a serum sample of a subject.
2. Description of Related Art
Endometriosis is a disease characterized by the presence of endometrial tissue at ectopic sites, such as glands and stroma cells of endometrium which should have grown inside the uterus, but grow at sites outsides the uterus while preserving the same physiological form of a normal endometrium.
Endometriosis is often not discovered until pain or fever occurred to a patient during menstrual period, which is then confirmed by physical inspecting abdominal cavity of the patient. Since symptoms of endometriosis are often overlooked by the patient, the diagnosis of endometriosis is often delayed, resulting more complicated situation. Despite several approaches for diagnosing endometriosis are available, however, they either have low acceptance rate by the patient or have limited sensitivity toward certain types of endometriosis. For example, laparoscopy may provide reliable diagnosis to endometriosis, yet its acceptance by patient is low due to the invasive procedures involved. Vaginal ultrasonic or nuclear resonance imaging (MRI) technique offers sensitive measurement to fibroid or chocolatecyst larger than 2 cm, yet it is not sensitive enough for detecting endometriosis. A serum biomarker, CA125, has been proposed for diagnosing endometriosis (Barbieri R. L., Fertil. Steril. 45: 767-769, 1986), however, its sensitivity to endometriosis is a low 15%.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,399,598 issued to Yang et al on Jul. 15, 2008 disclosed a method for diagnosing endometriosis among females aged 18 to 40 by detecting the level of alpha 1-antitrypsin (A1AT), and/or its fragments in the serum specimen. However, the detection was achieved by conventional immuno-blotting analysis. Therefore, there exists in this art a need of an improved means having enough sensitivity that allows for early detection of endometriosis in a reliable manner.